I was skeptical of the TV screens on Delta airplanes before working here. Since I’ve been here commuting and deadheading around I actually see a lot of people in the cabins watching the TVs. There’s movies on there that they may or may not have on their phones/tablets etc. People do seem to enjoy them, I think the only thing that’s not ideal is having to plug a headset in rather than have in-seat Bluetooth.

It certainly has a purpose and I don't have any doubts that the majority of passengers use them. My point was I don't see a huge need for it on short/medium haul flights when you can just have a holder for your device and have the same amount of shows and movies available on your device. That's just my opinion. But now that I have been given the title of CFO by your friend, maybe it'll mean more now ;)

Bro,

Delta closed Memphis and Cincinnati, and moved it all to Atlanta and Detroit.

United closed Cleveland and moved it to Chicago

American closed nothing. Try to imagine the cost and efficiency gains they would have if they could close a hub or two and retain the same amount revenue.

Laugh all you want, but not because they don’t have TVs or mgmt is floundering around.

Laugh because Philly is too close to NYC for them both to operate at full potential and because they merged last and there were no other options.

Mostly non competitive pre existing infrastructure is at play.

Surely you read about Delta lobbying congress for “long haul” slots at DCA? Why do they need to do that? Their ingenious TV idea makes them all their money.

NYC doesn’t work for AA because of too few slots, not proximity to PHL

CLE is still a base for UA

That doesn’t matter, it’s not a hub, they also opened two bases that are also not hubs, and BOS isn’t a hub for AA which is a base. CVG was a pilot base for Delta well after it wasn’t a hub. Hub and pilot base are not necessarily synonymous.

Well it’s the same thing, for AA to compete in the North East they have to split operations between PHL and NYC, and United and Delta do not have to. That is an efficiency loss for AA. USAir competed internationally with the legacy’s out of PHL when they had no access to NYC, and it does not reflect on “poor strategy” for AA mgmt.

The OP questions related to controllable strategy from mgmt as a perceived defining difference in profitability which is mostly not true and mostly reflective of infrastructure efficiency.

AA and Delta can each make 50B in revenue and AA profit way less because their infrastructure is way less efficient, and they don’t have a way to consolidate infrastructure without sacrificing revenue. Some employees somehow just think they are contempt with lower profit margins when they do not consider infrastructure efficiency. AA would profit way more if they could make 50B and close two hubs at the same time. The Delta NW merger was simply much more efficient.

again, no. AA doesn’t have enough slots in NY. Can’t get anymore. No control. PHL still does fine as a euro connection hub and with dramatically less overhead and minimal competition for O&D

No, the non-originating NYC legacy AA traffic is heavily poached by PHL via the legacy USAir network.

They are not able to backfill rerouting their own traffic cheaper through PHL, so the void shows up in NYC.

They don’t have the same presence in NYC as Delta and United, but if the presence they do have were full all the time they would make plenty. If they were to make plenty with full planes, it would still be less efficient than the PHL and JFK demand being combined at the same airport like D and U.

They merged and rerouted the pax as cheap as possible and the void shows up where it is most expensive to route.

They need more slots to scale and backfill the void they created by rerouting their own traffic due to an inefficient merger.

how do they get more slots in NYC? JFK T8 has never been this busy since it was built. I don’t think any airline has good profit margins in NY, as the expenses are crazy.